We were charged $9000 for epidural during our first child's delivery. After a lot of back and forth between me, the hospital and the insurance company I ended up paying $99.
I never tried to understand the logic.
I had two insurance companies when our first kid was born, and the hospital completely botched the filing leading to both companies denying the claims because of late filing and so on (we gave them additional the info they needed a few days after the initial claim was denied — they didn’t refile until nearly a year later).
They tried to come after us for 10s of thousands of dollars in bills.
After much back and forth with insurance companies and the hospital most of it was either discharged or paid for by insurance, they eventually sent us to collections for $1000.
Unfortunately for them, I had been taking detailed notes of conversations, including people I talked to and dates and times, and had gone through itemized bills, noting things like duplicate charges, and multiple times I had been lied to on the phone by the billing department about what paperwork they had filed with the insurance companies and when along with documentary evidence by the insurance companies.
By my reckoning they actually owed me an $800 refund from a check I had sent them earlier to cover a charge that an insurance company later paid.
I said if there isn’t a check in the mail today for $800 and the collections notice retracted, I’m taking all this information and filing in small claims court.
It was taken care of that day.
My kid was already walking by the time the billing was handled for his birth.
It’s so depressing because as a hospital, we have absolutely no complaints about the care. It’s hard to believe that they can be so competent at delivering care and so completely incompetent at billing for it.
Seriously you should. Companies fear State Attorneys General. I filed a complaint against one of the major wireless carriers with my State Attorney General office. Within days I had someone from the executive offices at head quarters calling me to resolve the issue. Companies know that State Attorneys General have teeth and resources to sue or fine companies found to be breaking laws or being abusive. I suppose it also helps to have a consumer caring (rather business caring) State Attorney General.
Yet hospitals are not killing (no pun intended) it like apple or Microsoft. The massive margins are getting eaten somehow. Expensive equipment, salaries, commissions, patients telling them to shove the bill. I don’t know something is missing
There is another dirty side to our healthcare. They generally lose money on the uninsured and in some cases Medicare/Medicaid. Essentially we pay for that coverage with our dollars.
The "emergency rooms must treat" law (I forget the name or how long ago it was, sorry) resulted in state governments stopping funding public hospitals - which made this state of affairs basically inevitable.
